Reading Strand

At a young age, it is very important for students to focus on developing their skills and knowledge to help them become successful readers. Reading is a skill that we consistently use in our daily lives and we want our students to be able to read with confidence and possess the ability to comprehend the information encountered and realize the relevancy of what it is that they are reading.  As teachers we want to install a growth mindset in our classroom to help our students realize the importance of reading. We have to convince them that reading can be a great source to dig into your imagination and discover new worlds and experiences that they may have no been aware of before. These experiences can help develop their proficiency and improve their reading habits with a little bit of practice.

The website www.readwritethink.org is a great resource for teachers to use to find many different sources and strategy guides to help teacher with their professional development to educate students with their reading comprehension. This site has lesson plans, printouts, strategy guides, videos, and professional library’s to assist teachers with all of their educational needs.

There are many expectations that can be met with this resource. I was amazing at how in depth some of these instructional plans were. I analyzed an instructional plan for supporting student comprehension in the content area of reading. This strategy guide takes a different approach to help students focus on what is most important in what they are reading and offer students meaningful ways to respond to and to make sense of what they are reading so students can engage themselves in reading with confidence. One strategy that they suggest to improve students reading comprehension is to have the students group in pairs and have them read silently or aloud. Then, once they both reach an agreed upon reading spot, they come together and ask each other questions and discuss what they have just read. I thought that this was a very effective strategy because it allows students to collaborate and reflect on what they just reading so that they can determine what is important and retain the particular information at a greater success.

Another strategy from this instructional plan that I thought was extremely effective was to have students reflect on what they have just read through informal writing such as writing a journal entry after they had read the specific content. It is important to have them write about what they have just read because the content is fresh in their mind and they are more likely to be able to express the information that just received sooner, rather than later. Teachers could also have the students write a few key ideas from the reading on a cue, so that can help students construct meaning behind what they are reading and practice with their cue cards. I can see myself using this strategy in the classroom because having students collaboratively reading allows them to recognize the text and communicate their understand of the text, which is an important part of reading expectations for students.  Also, this strategy helps students identify their strengths as readers and give them the change to work on improvement areas.

                                  [Online Image]. Retrieved from Giphy.com

Final Word

I can't believe this class is coming to an end. As I sit here in my final tech class I can say that I have learned a lot about technology in general and incorporating technology into the classroom. I think that it is very important for us as teacher candidates to learn about some of the many different technological programs, apps, and strategies for the classroom because technology is being integrated into our classrooms at a growing rate. I learned how to use many different programs like Powtoon, Google Slides, and Blogger which I feel I can comfortably use as a teacher. I am sad that this class has come to an end but I look forward to using all that I have learned in the future, when I become a teacher.

Week 4

This week will be the last week that I document for my Genius Hour and I must say, I’m really happy that I had the opportunity to do this because I know that if it wasn’t for this project, I would definitely not be doing anything like this because school and work consume the majority of my time. The fact that I incorporated this into my weekly schedule has proven to me that it is possible. I have already signed up to continue these classes, so I guess for progress I have remained committed to this, which I am very happy about!

Week 3

This week’s class went really well. I still came out of the class exhausted and sweaty as last week but I didn’t feel like I was going to puke, so I guess that is an accomplishment in itself. We did these leg kicks on the bag and I can really feel the soreness now. I think its because I was using leg muscles that I don’t normally but hopefully it will pass soon. I’m really enjoying the classes thus far, and I think that I will continue going to these classes once my Genius Hour assignment is complete!

Week 2

Today was the first session of my Kickboxing Cardio class and it totally kicked my butt but I feel great afterwards! The session was a little different than I had originally expected but in a good way. The class was definitely challenging and their were points during the workout where I had to take breaks. Today, I really got to see how out of shape I am because at one point I felt a little bit dizzy and thought that I may puke but I stuck with it and paced myself and survived my first class. Here’s to hoping that I can keep up in next week’s class.

Week 1

This week I did some research to try and find a place to do cardio and decide on what type of cardio I want to take part in. I narrowed it down to two places but I came to the conclusion that I was most interested in a Cardio Kickboxing class that takes place every Thursday night for an hour per session. I called the business and asked what kind of exercises we would be doing during the class, just to get an idea of what to expect and they told me that it would be similar to a boot camp style of cardio integrated with kickboxing. So we will see how it goes! Excited to begin my journey!

Media Studies Blog Post

 
In today’s day and age, it is important for students to develop their media literacy skills at a young age. Technology in the class room has become the norm and the traditional methods of learning, are slowly being pushed aside by technological advancements such as media texts, graphics, sounds, and mobile devices, which are being integrated into the classroom and incorporated in teachers daily lesson plans.

    According to The Ontario Curriculum, to develop student’s media literacy skills, they should have opportunities to interact with a variety of different media tools and be able to explore and consider how these different media texts can be applied to their everyday lives. This is why it is important for us as teachers, to effectively introduce Media Literacy to our students so that they media literacy tools that are appropriate for their given grade level. If not, it is my job as a teacher to use my professional judgment and identify the learning needs of the students in my classroom.

    Edutopia is great resource for teachers in the media strand. It is a website founded by the filmmaker George Lucas that encourages innovation in the classroom. The website has an online community that shares core strategies for teaching in areas of project-based learning, comprehensive assessment, teacher development, and technology integration among others. When we were introduced to this website in class, I was amazed at the variety of resources and lesson plans that this website had to offer for teachers. It is truly amazing to see that are actually alternative and unique ways and ideas out there for teachers to use a the simple click of a button.

    While browsing Edutopia and looking for a unique resource for media literacy, I stumbled across an article for new teachers on technology integration in the classroom. http://www.edutopia.org/article/new-teachers-technology-integration-resources. This article has many strategies and tools to help new teachers effectively incorporate technology to guide educational activities and objectives in the classroom.  The page provides tips and strategies on how to get started integrating technology and teaching and gives links to other related blogs on the same topic. For example, one of the blogs gives 3 strategies of balanced tech integration for using Edmodo in the classroom, Google sites, and Google Drive. This page also provides multiple resources for evaluating and selecting technology tools, managing technology in the classroom and teaching digital literacy and citizenship. All of these topic are extremely important to help students develop the skills required to understand and develop their media literacy.

    Below is a photograph that I found on digital literacy and citizenship. I thought that it would be a fitting way to end my blog post because this image displays many of the social media tools that students may access and provides the acronym “think”.  As teachers, it is important for us to educate our students to “think” before we post because we always have to be aware of our digital footprint and some of the repercussions of posting something on the Internet without fully acknowledging the possible outcomes of our decisions.
  I hope that you enjoyed my blog and I look forward to continuing my strand blog assignment.

Kevin


[Online Image].Retrieved from https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/pmate-ppmee.nsf/eng/wz02162.html